Picture a dark basement. No windows and no way for light to find its way in. The corners are starting to grow damp with moisture. There is nothing in it but a single light bulb swinging erratically and aggressively from the ceiling. You are trapped in this basement and all you can do is watch that light bulb swing more and more violently. You cannot escape it no matter how much you try. All you can do is absorb the light and slowly but surely lose your mind.

That is what the debut full length from Hesitation Wounds feels like.

The side project from Touché Amoré’s frontman Jeremy Bolm is nothing too serious. With him and the other members all having other bands to focus on, it feels very much like Hesitation Wounds is more of a capsule for the aggressions that its members cannot expel in their other bands. Maybe that’s one of the reasons that ‘Awake For Everything’ is so intense. It is every bad thought and moment of weakness coming out at once. It is a record built on desolation and it shouldn’t be anything else.

Jumping from the fastest of hardcore to sounds that wouldn’t sound out of place on a power-violence record all the way through to the harshest of punk and devastating of down tempo, ‘Awake For Everything’ is a smorgasbord of delights for an extreme music fans. Bolm leads the way with a vocal overflowing with angst and hurt while behind him his band mates deliver a masterclass in harrowing blast beats and darkened riffs. The breakneck pace of ’All We Know’ and ‘Guthrie’ compliment the growing and delicately disturbing vibes of ‘Ends Pt.2’ and ‘New Abuse’ while being held together tightly by an underlying feeling of complete desolation.

All in all, Hesitation Wounds have put together one of truly great hardcore albums of 2016 so far as if it was almost second nature. It doesn’t get much better than this.

4/5

‘Awake for Everything’ by Hesitation Wounds is released on May 27th on 6131 Records.

Words by Jack Rogers (@JackMRog)